


exile vilify

by glitterforplaster (ineffableangel)



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Portal, M/M, Portal AU, are there honestly any fics in the les mis tag not tagged with major character death, its les mis. major character death is a selling point, yeah ill fucking tag it with major character death just watch me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-02
Updated: 2014-02-02
Packaged: 2018-01-10 20:44:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1164330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineffableangel/pseuds/glitterforplaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Vilify…</em> To slander; to defame. He wonders where he’s heard that word before, and why he knows immediately what it means. He thinks of kings, and then wonders about that, too.</p><p>(portal au)</p>
            </blockquote>





	exile vilify

**Author's Note:**

> grantaire as rattmann, eponine as his talking companion cube, enjolras as chell, others as surprise guests.
> 
> if you don't know anything about the portal games, but still would like to read this, i'd suggest going [here](http://icarus.co.vu/post/54045807288) (spoilers for the first and second game). if you're already familiar with the series, i'd suggest checking it out anyway, as i've included extras. inspired by [this lovely art.](http://perplexingly.tumblr.com/post/49143328426/someone-actually-wrote-portal-au)
> 
> 9/30/15 update: polished off and included a lot of unfinished bits and pieces of this au i found in my drafts recently, and added some minor tweaks and rewrites, so that this feels more complete to me now. i really hope you appreciate this, because it is 2015. it is 2015 and i have spent time and effort reworking old les mis fic at 4 in the morning. please throw me a rope so i can get out of this hole

Even if he hadn’t seen the ominous message graffitied onto the wall of the testing chamber, he would have known something was terribly wrong.

He’d already been through five other chambers, and completed four other tests. He’d gotten the gun, too, had figured out how to use it, though he’s not sure how long that took him. In fact, he’s not sure of anything. He doesn’t even know his own name.

 _She’s watching_ , the message reads, written in curling letters so dark red they’re almost black. _She’s always watching._

He assumes it refers to the voice he’s been hearing since he woke up, the one whose speech pattern is never exactly human, as much as it might try. It's taunted him, calling him a failure, a disgrace to history, a brutal and unforgiving god— all words that mean little to him, if they’re meant to mean anything at all. He calls the voice _PaTRia_ , because it’s the only name left to him, though he knows it’s not quite right.

There are cameras in every corner of the room, he finds, cold metal and winking glass, and a window, behind which sits an empty room, full of empty chairs. The message is written just out of the cameras’ line of sight, deliberately placed where only he could find it.  _She’s always watching,_ it says.  _But I know how to help you. Permets-tu?_

 

  

 

*

 

 

There are more messages in every chamber.

He knows he can get through the tests himself, even without the red arrows and the tips on how to bend his knees when he lands— but, still, he’s glad to have them, if only because they remind him that he’s not alone.

 _This way_ , the words astride the arrow tell him, and he follows.

(The idea of _following_ rests heavily on his chest, a foreign concept flexing its fingers for the first time; he can’t stop thinking about it, now, or about whom he might be following. He gets the distinct feeling that, before today, he’d always been a leader.)

 

 

 

*

 

 

The lift is jammed in chamber number six.

As soon as he’d left it, it had tried to ascend, but there was something pushing it back down, and it stuck. He could hear it creak and groan like something alive, until finally it gave. A single gray cube fell from the shaft above the lift, and dropped at his feet.

“Do not be alarmed,” PaTRia told him in her singsong, cheerful way. “That object is an Abaissés Science Companion Cube, designed to help you complete tests. Leave it there. If it tries to speak to you, kill it. Perhaps with a sharp stick, or a deadly neurotoxin. Incineration is a personal favorite of mine. You are _definitely_ just going mad.”

 _She is lying_ , reads the sloping lines painted onto the Cube’s side. _They do speak._

He does not touch the Cube.

 

 

 

*

 

 

Sometimes he’ll stumble upon a different sort of message— less of an objective direction, and more of an encouragement.

 _I knew you could do it,_ he finds in chamber number twelve. _You always could._

There’s something strange about the graffiti, this time. It slopes off on the last letter, and the paint thins as it reaches the floor, as if its artist had stumbled or fallen as he was finishing it. He worries about that. He worries about a lot of things, lately.

But he needn’t have, because there’s another, written in the next chamber, in a corner where the wall has partially collapsed, to bar it from view of the cameras. Vines have grown over the tile, but he can still read it;  _I believe in you._

 

 

 

 

 

*

 

 

He’s afraid.

He’ll never admit that he is, but he is. And there’s no one to admit it to, anyway, except perhaps the chilling half-human voice that haunts him everywhere he goes. She’s not necessarily saying anything so frightening— she insults him, yes, but it’s nothing that would make his pulse leap the way it does, that would cause this heavy dread settling in the pit of his stomach.

It’s just the things she _doesn’t_ say that terrify him. She doesn’t tell him who he is, or why he’s here. She doesn’t start conversations or threaten him or attempt to make him fail the tests. She’s not particularly passive, and not particularly aggressive; in fact, she’s a little of both.

And she doesn’t tell him that he’s going to die in this lab, but he knows that he will.

 

 

 

*

 

 

_You’ve made it this far. That’s great. But this is where it gets hard._ _So I want you to remember everything She’s told you, everything you’ve learned from surviving – from playing into Her little game – for this long._

_Got it?_

He nods to himself, even though there’s no one to see him. The movement pushes his greasy curls into his eyes.

_Okay. Great._

_Now forget all of it, because you are definitely going to die._

 

 

 

 

 

*

 

 

He lives.

_I knew you would. She never could kill you, could She?_

He starts to wonder just how many times She’s tried.

 

 

 

*

 

 

The messages stop making sense to him.

It starts around chamber twenty-six, when he’s dodging turrets and rolls into a safe-zone. The wall had caved in long ago, and given way to an abandoned testing room, half-collapsed and covered in green vines and leaves. The floor here is mostly puddles of muddy water, but there are still some tiles on which he can walk, if he picks his way across them carefully.

 _Eponine says if I take them, she’ll fade, and I won’t be able to hear her anymore,_ he reads. _But I need a clear head for what is to come._

He wonders who Eponine is; this is the first time she’s been mentioned, and he knows the name doesn’t refer to PaTRia. The artist only ever calls the voice _Her_ , as if she is no longer deserving of any other name.

There are cycles of the moon on the ceiling, he finds, and more scribblings on the walls. One shows someone in an orange jumpsuit, sharing a piece of cake with a machine. Another depicts a screaming woman, surrounded by men in lab coats. Shivers creep up his neck, and he turns away from the drawings, looking for more red arrows to tell him which way to go. He hates that he depends on them, now—hates how helpless he feels without them, but there is little else to do, so he looks for them anyway.

But there are no messages directed at him, and for the first time he wonders if maybe he wasn’t supposed to find these.

_I don’t want Eponine to fade._

_I don’t want to be alone. Not again._

 

 

 

*

 

 

From there, it only gets worse. The messages are no longer always coherent, and sometimes he can’t make out the words or images at all. The artist, whoever he is, seems to blame himself for something— something awful, something unforgivable.  _I’m sorry. I’m so sorry._ _I never meant for this to happen, but it was the only way._

He worries, a little, about what that means, but to be completely honest he’s surprised he even has _time_ to worry about it— or _anything,_ other than leaving the next test unscathed.

( _Unscathed_. Right, sure. He tries not to think about the scars on his legs and arms, or how it hurts to stand up straight when all this time he’s been crouching.

He tries not to think about the way this lab will never truly leave him, no matter how far he runs.

And for once, he’s thankful that he does not sleep, because he knows all his dreams would be nightmares.)

 

 

 

*

 

 

The first den he finds is on the second level of chambers. It’s tucked away behind broken panels in one of the viewing boxes, just out of sight of the windows. There are more messages here, and images of those Cubes, and empty bottles labeled simply as _Beer_.

 _I think better when I’m drinking_ , he reads. _Don’t look at me like that._

The faint edges of a smile spring to his mouth, but they are only followed by more confusion. How did the artist know he would be glaring at the bottles? How could he have predicted such a causal movement, one so natural that he hardly even gave it a thought? Do they know each other, somehow?

_The cake is a lie. The cake is a lie. The cake is a lie. The cake is a lie. The cake is_

_Birthday cake_

_Is it birthday cake? The cake? The cake_

_When was the last time I had a birthday?_

_I don’t remember how old I am anymore. Was it 24? 26? Do you know?_

He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know anything but the lab and the voice and the red paint pointing him to momentary safety.

 

 

 

*

 

 

_Eponine is worried about you._

_I’m worried about you._

His fingertips brush the letters, coming away smeared with orangey-red. It’s fresh. Or maybe it isn’t, and he’s only imagining it. Maybe he’s imagining all of this. That would be just like him— to think up a whole world just to keep him company.

 _I’m worried about you;_ he keeps repeating it in his head. There’s something familiar about it, something intimate and secret in the slope of those words. He thinks he may have said that, once, long ago, to someone whose face he’s forgotten.  _Worried about you..._

 _You should be,_ he thinks, and moves on. 

 

 

 

*

 

 

_Don’t do anything drastic._ _Too many variables..._ _I can’t calculate the outcome of your actions. The outcome of you._ _Just do as She says. She’ll lead you right to Her, if you’re careful. She’ll show you the way out; She’ll tell you who She really is._

_Don’t do anything drastic._

_Don't do anything._

He can promise nothing.

 

 

 

*

 

 

None of the other dens have empty bottles.

_This is the longest I’ve ever been sober._

_I think._

 

 

 

*

 

 

His shoulder aches from the shock of shooting, and there’s a pounding behind his eyes that comes from attempting to bend time and space around himself. Fear and pain cling to him, these days; they’ve become a second layer of skin, pulled taut around his bones.

 _Please, let me live,_ he prays, and jumps into open fire.

He’s never done anything in halves, and fighting for his life is no exception. He’s begun to wonder if he _can_ die— or if he was ever alive at all.

 

 

 

*

 

 

PaTRia has begun to taunt him again. He doesn’t like it, or the way the tones of her voice almost sound human until they slip, until they go up when they should have gone down, doesn’t like the reminder that he’s the only real thing in here. Unless he isn’t real, but he doesn’t like that idea, either.

"Turn back," she sings to him sometimes, cold and unfeeling. "You're not supposed to be here. Return to the testing chamber immediately, or I will be forced to kill you. You're not even going the right way. You should have turned left back there. You don't care, do you? You don't care if you live or die. Very well. Rot there, by yourself, in the dark. Then we will see, who cares the least. It will be me."

Despite the warnings and the threats, he hides from her; chooses the back-paths of maintenance doors and ruined staircases. He keeps finding little nooks, places where his artist has been before him. Some of them have messages for him, but at this point he’s not sure he was ever expected to find them, anyway. There’s one that he’s particularly fond of— in the sense that it makes something warm and reckless like hope flutter in his chest. It’s a drawing of an angel with his eyes closed, and beside him is a graph with low stats for every category except the last— _tenacity_.

Stubbornness.

 _Subject shows an alarming capacity for tenacity, although ranking average in every other aspect of testing_ , echoes a sketched case file on the opposite wall _._ There’s little more written on it than a few lines, and it has no picture or name to go with it. Maybe it's about the artist. Maybe it's about him.

_Never gives up._

_Ever._

 

 

 

 

*

 

 

The hallways are getting harder to navigate, the tests he does complete even harder, the messages scarcer. In five or six chambers, he has only seen one red message. He wonders if it’s because the artist figures he can work out the puzzles for himself, now, or because he is running out of paint.

He doesn’t think about the third option.

He doesn’t want to be alone.

_Not again._

 

 

 

*

 

 

A refrain haunts him, clinging to his heels, a ghost even lonelier than he— the wandering spirit of a song, lost even as it carefully maps an empty room.

( _Not empty_ , his artist might tell him if he were real, the corners of his mouth curving into a smile. _Not when there’s you, right?_

But, no, he doesn’t count. He’s not really here, either.)

_Vilify… don’t even try…_

The radio crackles once— now twice. He leans back in the chair, picks at the ruined leather of the seat cover with his scarred fingers. Bruises bloom across the inside of his elbow and forearm, spreading flowers of purple and brown where he usually rests the Abaissés gun. This is not a break, he knows. He doesn’t get breaks, and he is not safe here, like he is not safe anywhere. But he can’t bring himself to leave yet. Not while the piano music slides across his skin, wisps of the first friendly sounds he’s heard in much too long.

 _Vilify..._ To slander; to defame. He wonders where he’s heard that word before, and why he knows immediately what it means. He thinks of kings, and then wonders about that, too.

 _You’ve got sucker’s luck… Have you given up?_ _Does it feel like a trial?_ _Does it trouble your mind the way you trouble mine?_ _Does it feel like a trial?_ _Did you fall for the same empty answers again?_

Everything feels like a trial to him. Every answer is empty.

 

 

 

*

 

 

The artist was not running out of paint. He was only saving it up for something bigger.

Paintings cover the chamber, flowing in golds and oranges and crimsons. They show a man, most of them, or perhaps he’s an angel, or a god. Some of the images are too covered with words to make out what they’re meant to be. The angel has blond hair that curls around his shoulders, and a shining halo drawn in a red too dark and rust-colored to be anything but blood. His features are sharp and unforgiving, but he holds himself like royalty would. He’s _everywhere_ — on the floor, and the walls, and parts of the ceiling that have collapsed low enough to be reached by an out-stretched arm.

There’s one painting in a corner so blacked out with words that, from far away, it’s difficult to tell if it’s of the same subject. _Apollo Apollo Apollo,_ the words go, over and over, covering what might be a cheek here, a throat there.  _Apollo Apollo Apollo you are Apollo_

He moves forward, his hand held up to brush fingers across the script, but he doesn’t reach the painting before something crunches under his foot, and pain lances up his leg and across his side. He glances down and sees that he’s stepped on another painting, a much smaller one, now with his blood clinging to the shattered pieces. This one is strange, he thinks. It… _moves_.

 _Oh_. It’s not a painting at all. It’s broken glass, and the man staring back at him is his own reflection.

The paintings are of _him_. They’re all of _him_.

He steps back, stumbling as the glass in his foot twists the wrong way, his too-long hair spilling out of its ponytail in bright blonde waves. He feels wild, suddenly, wild and helpless because he knows, he _knows_ — He knows he’s supposed to remember something, something connected to these paintings and this name; knows he wasn’t ever supposed to forget it. It’s important, it’s _so_ important, but—

But the frayed thread of memory has gone, leaving behind only one word, slashed across a canvas that covers every inch of space in his heart and in his head:

_Apollo._

 

 

 

*

 

 

Somewhere around the next chamber, the artist does run out of paint, and starts carving the words instead. Apollo doesn’t know what he’s using, but it’s likely that he picked up a piece of scrap metal to scratch the words into the tile.

_Help me._

He’s more afraid now than he’s ever been.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

Apollo can hardly stop to catch his breath between tests. He's thrown himself back into them, hunting down the messages from his only contact with the living, trying futilely to outrun the AI that chases him wherever he goes. There’s no rest, not even for a moment. He dreams that he manages to draw air into his lungs, chest heaving and heart racing. There are no more messages here, it seems, at least on this level— save only one:

 _I am R_.

It’s the first mention that his artist has made of himself as something more than a guide, let alone given himself what seems to be a name.

_I am R and I sleep with the rats but the rats are long dead. I want to follow them I want to follow them I will follow them when_

_when I am done here._

_Will I ever be done here? Done with you?_

_I am R I am R I am the Ratman._

 

 

 

*

 

_Who am I who am I who am I_

_Who are you_

Apollo closes his eyes, blocking out the desperate words carved into the tile. When he speaks, it’s for the first time in too long, and his voice is hoarse, little more than a whisper in the dark;

"I don’t know."

 

 

 

*

 

 

"You're not a good person. You know that, right? Good people don't end up here. Good people don't leave places made specifically for them to stay in. Good people don't abandon their friends."

 

 

 

*

 

 

He keeps going. He does not think.

He keeps going and he does not think about the rats, or the Ratman, or the red paint, or the halo drawn in blood, or his face all over the walls. He does not think about the whispers he can hear through the walls sometimes, the gravelly low voice that speaks in gibberish. He does not think about the soft tune from the radio, asking him if he’s yet given up, if he’s yet fallen from grace.

He does not think about the glowing blue light ahead of him. He does not think about what will happen when he meets Her. He does not think about what it will feel like to die.

He keeps going. He does not think he does not think he does not think.

_I don’t want to be alone. Not again._

 

 

*

 

 

Apollo drags himself through test upon test, corridor upon corridor, completing the puzzles with only his body, his mind occupied with bigger things, brighter things. He thinks of sunlight, tries to create a painting of his own with his limited memories, the way it filtered hazy through the leaves of a tall oak tree, the warmth of it on his skin. He misses the sky so much it aches in him, persistent, pure, a wanting so desperate and physical that it becomes the sole reassurance he's still human, after everything. It's not until he accidentally walks into a turret assembly line that he has another thought to cling to (strange, that he should find the reminder of his own consciousness with machines).

Half-finished turrets move slowly from one side of the room to the other on the conveyor belt, still running despite its rust and jerky movements. A few of the little machines lay discarded on the floor. Although those on the conveyor belt are silent and unmoving, one of the turrets closest to him — lain on its side as if unable to right itself — is singing softly in the way that children do, at once sure and halting, making it up as they go along. " _There was a time we killed the king... We tried to change the world too fast! Now we have got... a new... queen! She's... no better than... the last..."_

A sudden fire grips him, a passionate fervor for a cause he can't name, turning him hot and angry. It's only a flash, gone again in a moment, but it was  _something,_ something from his past, something that was  _his_ and his alone. "Excuse me," he says quietly, crouching slowly beside it, trying not to spook it. Its red searchlight swivels to him. He holds a hand up to his face, shielding his eyes from the glare. "What are you singing about?"

The turret makes a whirring sound, and it’s part laugh, part machinery. It seems to smile, patient and secret. “I can’t say much or Big Sister will be angry, but... the answer you’re looking for is beneath us.” It giggles again, starts to say, "And her name is _Co _—"_  _but the hush of the room is suddenly broken by the screech of metal on metal, and an enormous claw descends from the ceiling. Apollo scrambles back, on instinct trying to take the singing turret with him, hugging it to his chest to shield it from danger, but the claw only follows them both, clamping the sleek body of the turret in its unforgiving fingers and yanking it away, too strong for him to fight.

"Defective personality chip detected," says an automated voice. "Do not interfere. Incinerating in five... four..."

A hatch opens in the tile. The claw hovers over it, turret in its grasp, red embers sparking below. The turret begins to sing again, urgent now, scared. " _This is the land that fought for liberty!_ _Now when we fight, we fight for bread!"_

"Don't!" Apollo screams, and it's ripped from somewhere deep inside him, somewhere he has no control over, a place still unbroken that craves a friend, however small or unfamiliar. "Please!"

" _Here is the thing about equality! Everyone's equal when they're _ _—___ "

The claw releases, the little turret drops down, down, down, into the flames, the hatch closes, and the last word of its song is lost. Apollo doubles over and clutches at his gut, anguish clear in every line of his form. A memory stirs— a half-remembered face, another child who knew too much and died too soon, and when he cradles his face in his hands, his cheeks are wet with tears.

When after a long time he stands again, he makes his way down, following the turret's advice.  _The answer you're looking for is beneath us._

 

 

*

 

 

The lower levels are different from the testing chambers. They’re mostly scaffolding, for one, with high ceilings and more floor space than he’s ever seen. It looks like a warehouse, he thinks, rather than a laboratory. There still remain remnants of a decade past— red carpets and uniforms more rudimentary than Apollo's own. A gilded portrait of a freckled man in a smart pinstripe suit still hangs on the wall opposite the lift. A young Korean woman with stands behind him, one hand on the back of his chair, the other half-hiding a knowing smile. The painting itself is intact, if a bit grimy, but the plaque beneath it has tarnished with age, hardly readable. Other reminders of how long this facility has sat vacant are scattered throughout the levels; an old recording startled Apollo from his thoughts as he exited the lift for the first time, and it follows him long after he's moved on, looking for a way out, looking for answers.

 _"Welcome to _ _Abaissés__ Science! I've gathered you all here because you're the best of the best, the pioneers of the future! The building blocks, if you would. Ha. Get it? __Abaissés? ABC? ...Right, well, anyway,__ I suppose you've already met one another on the ride over, so, um, I'm Marius Pontmercy _— I own _ _Abaissés__ _— and the woman who greeted you is the lovely Cosette, my partner in all things except crime. No crime. Everything we do here is completely legal. Please don't report us."___ The speaker clears his throat nervously, and the intercom crackles with static. _ _ _"Cosette should have already caught you up on our policies. Right, dearest? She's the bones of this facility, keeps me from giving up, burning it to the ground, and collecting the insurance. It was left to me by my grandfather. I always wanted to be an astronaut. But Cosette believes in this place, and I believe in her.__ "_

" _Do you?_ _”_  asks a delicate voice from the background. She sounds faintly amused, as though she’s heard all this several times before.

“ _Yes,”_ comes the firm answer. “ _Now, I guess, uh, well, let's all stay positive and do— do some— some sci— ence—”_  The recording is interrupted by a bout of loud, racked coughing. When the speaker recovers, his voice is fainter, as though he’s leaning away from the microphone:  _“Cosette, please— bring me more— pain pills.”_

There’s an echoing click, and the lab is thrown into devastating silence once again. A few minutes later, as Apollo is climbing the scaffolding, the recording picks up again. It startles him yet again, and his fingers slip from the cold metal, his stomach spiraling into terror for one falling-flying moment, before he regains his grip.

“ _The point is, if we can store music on a compact disc, why can't we, I don’t know, store a person on one? A whole personality?”_ There seems to be no discernible link between the previous message and this one. He feels as though he’s missed something, and wonders, perhaps, if Monsieur Pontmercy had kept talking after the end of the last recording, although it would have been more to himself than to any audience. “ _Artificial Intelligence, you know! We should’ve been working on it years ago! If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we put a man in a machine? Or woman. Or other.”_

Apollo climbs. His arms ache from holding himself up, but he keeps on, spurred by the words of the turret and the mystery of this place, the mystery of his own existence within it. The soft, awkward voice of Marius Pontmercy, CEO, resounds above him.

“ _I will say this, though, and— and I'm gonna say it on tape, so everybody hears it— if I die before I’m transferred into a computer, I want Cosette to run this place.”_

Apollo pauses, tilting his head to listen.

“ _Now, she'll argue. She'll say she can't. But you remind her _— you remind her she runs it already. Without her, there would be no _ _ _ _Abaissés____. It's her company, no matter whose name is on the papers._ ”_

Silence again. Then—

“ _I suppose you’d better get testing, then? So, uh... I’ll leave you to it. The testing, I mean. Um. Say goodbye, Cosette!”_

“ _Goodbye, Cosette.”_

There’s a hint of stifled laughter in the background, and the recording cuts out again.

He wonders, then, not for the first time, what happened here to make the building hold its breath, to cause the AI in the control room to rue the very existence of anything that crossed her path. What happened to the cheerful employees that used to man every station, and to the sweet young woman on the intercom who once shared a private joke with her husband? Did the workers here at Abaissés take their coffee in the break room, and nod politely to those others they may have disliked? Did they go out for drinks afterwards with their coworkers? Did they enjoy their jobs? Did they have families? And this place — this empty warehouse in the middle of nowhere, full of half-finished machines and forgotten dreams for the future — what happened here to make the floors crumble and the halls desert of all living creatures save the rats? Save the Ratman? Save... _him_?

It’s possible, after all, that he doesn’t really want to know the answer.

 

 

*

 

 

It’s dark when he finally reaches Her; the fluorescents that followed him from chamber to chamber, keeping him from sleep, from escape, have finally gone out, too far down in the facility to bother with the meaningless courtesies extended to him thus far. He welcomes the shadows after so long in the light.

She fights; he fights back. He questions; She evades. It's a well-worn dance by now, a pattern, but he's tired of it. He's so tired. He just wants to rest, wants it to be over. He wants to see his friends again; he's sure he had friends, even if the memories are hazy, a smile here, a tattoo there, a common cause, a shared purpose, a family. He's absolutely sure he had a family.

Once or twice, he looks over his shoulder and catches sight of himself in the space between the portals, the space between his own makeshift patches of reality. Long-unwashed blond hair spills onto his shoulders, its ponytail holder too frayed to hold it any longer; scars and bruises cover his arms and the backs of his calves, blood crusted beneath his sharp nose, his eyes wild and unfamiliar. He's panting, shoulders heaving. The portal gun rests in the crook of his arm like an extension of his body. He doesn't know who he is without it. He doesn't know who he is at all.

_Apollo._

It's not his real name, he knows, but it's all he's got, and the memory of it spurs him into action yet again; the messages are gone, but their vehemence remains.  _I believe in you, _I believe in you,_ _I believe in you.__

Someone out there trusted him, once. Someone counted on him. Maybe someone still is.

Darting through the portal, Apollo leaps toward PaTRia, slicing at part of Her, darting away, and then again, again, hacking at Her until it breaks off, ignoring all the lies She spews, lies about him, about Ratman, about this place. He shoots another portal far from Her, near the hatch in the corner, where he knows from experience there is a way to destroy a piece of her soul, as lost as it may be in the matrix of her perfect, streamlined form. All the humanity has been carefully crafted out of her with time and trauma and artificial additions. He knows that from experience, too.

"You really don't want to do that." PaTRia sing-songs. "You think you do, but you don't, and soon you'll regret it. I am a computer, and I know these things."

"You don't know anything about regret," Apollo spits. "You don't feel anything anymore."

PaTRia titters. "Oh! The prodigal son speaks at last. And what a lot of nothing he has to say. Where have you gone? Come out so I can murder you. I will do it slowly, and it will be the best part of my day."

Apollo bites his tongue, shifting into the shadows, knowing She means it, even when every part of him is crying out for vengeance, for justice. The part he'd taken from her is balanced against his hip, chattering quietly. “The Fact Sphere is the most brilliant sphere," it is saying. "The Fact Sphere is the most accurate sphere. The Fact Sphere is always right.” The part— the core — pauses and glances up at him with its single eye, as though trying to gauge his reaction. “The Fact Sphere’s name is Combeferre.”

Apollo shifts the weight of the core under his arm. He’s still hidden for the moment, safe for the moment, but he doesn’t know how long it will last. “Hello, Combeferre,” he whispers, and the name sits familiar on his tongue— an old friend.

“The situation you are in is very dangerous,” the Combeferre Core informs him solemnly. “The likelihood of you dying within the next five minutes is eighty-seven point six one percent.”

Apollo nods.

“The same percentage goes for you dying  _violently_ ,” Combeferre adds.

He nods again, and grips the handle of the core with his free hand, the other still gripping the portal gun like a lifeline, fingers pushing to lock the trigger, whole body poised on the tips of his toes, a battle-hardened ballerina waiting for the show to start. He does not speak, and he does not move. Not yet. Not yet.

“This is a terrible plan, and you will fail. She will most likely kill you.  _Violently._ ” The Core seems to sigh, resigned to a fate that is not his own. “I am very sorry— that is a fact.”

“Come out, little god, little soldier, little leader,” PaTRia taunts. “I have a death trap with your name on it. It is literally written on the side. Look, it’s says it right here, it says Enj— Oh, but you don’t know it, do you? Your own name, and you’ve forgotten it? How  _interesting_.”

He drags in a breath, forces down the anger rising in his chest. He remembers words from what seems like years ago, words made of color, sliced into the gray of the Weighted Abaissés Cube;  _She is lying._ And those other words, those words that drive him, this time from farther back than he likes to think about— than he  _can_  think about.  _I believe in you._ He sees red— red paint, red portals, red blood on his hands. Combeferre is humming where it rests against his hip, vibrations running up his spine with every step.  _Bump, bump, bump_ , against his leg the metal goes, and all the while it talks to him, its words cold and calculated and altogether too familiar.

“This situation is hopeless. Please do not do this. You are going to die in this room and you will do it alone.”

The music crescendos and the crowd is cheering his name and Apollo smiles, gentle and sad like a parting secret, and he thinks it’s the first time he’s  _ever_  smiled— or it feels that way, at least.

“I know,” he says softly, and steps into the spotlight.

 

 

*

 

 

The explosion rocks the entire facility, a head-to-toe shake of metal and memories, trapped so long in dust and silence that they were nearly lost. He finds himself whole at the end of the quake, whole and outside and warmed by the sun he never thought he'd see again. He falls to his knees and cries for joy, for freedom, for a thing he'd never tasted, even before all he knew was Abaissés. He cries for everything and everyone that was taken from him, for every person he loved and forgot, for Cosette, for Combeferre, for Gavroche and all the rest, for the family gone from him now for good. He buries his face in the grass and inhales and when he comes up again he notices the other figure only a few yards away, dragging himself from the debris, a brown-skinned man with messy black hair and red, red palms. Their eyes meet across the sunny field. Slowly, as if they'd rehearsed it, they each reach a hand out to the other.

It is true; the Fact Core is always right; Apollo died in that room.

But Enjolras lives. And he does not do it alone.


End file.
